Day 44, living the dream

The more we write and deposit on the internet the more that we give away elements of our personality.  We’re leaving a trail that can be used for many purposes. Much of it not for our benefit.

Generally when yaddering on the internet my tendency is to assume that it matters little as much is invented, made up, real elements are obfuscated, and quite a lot of it is silly. My typical outlook is not to worry. Yet there are algorithms out there that can detect trends that identify real things about our existence, our lives, and can categorise and profile us based on inference. My, and our, attempts to conceal information from these tools are not so good. I’m not thinking about the web based nonsense that we're lured to such as “we have profiled you on the last 600+ words you have tweeted”. Insidious though those things are, not those. No not those but the much more complex data mining that takes place across multiple repositories, public and private - yes, private too, scramble the tin-foil hat, put on the black helicopter, staple on your waterproof pants. Under your keyboards and behind your capacitive touch screens you and your data are being thoroughly sniffed.

The purposes for this data sniffing may be narrow or wide.  Identity theft, targeted advertising, for actuarial purposes, to identify subversives, to isolate and alienate, to stalk or rob, or even to impersonate us in public places.  The last one isn’t paranoia, and it can’t only be me that makes an effort to affect Louie Spence style mannerisms to deter it can it?

How much of what a person says and deposits in the granite of the internet is close to their own reality. How much is it their extremes of lifestyle or perhaps only their desires.  From the isolated hermit to the world of Mr Benn, which one might have moderated and damped down or talked up their experience for public consumption, either of them from a life possibly made up of fantastic episodes. How much of that data can be reassembled by the new order, the operators of the Byte-Juggler 2100 Geiger–Müller machine. Does that data represent you, is that data actually you, or are you more complex than that.*

How do we go about re-factoring this information to be more representative.  Or is that impossible given our complexity.  Instead maybe we should try something else.  Perhaps we should make more of an effort to break these assumption machines - that’s what they are, no matter how complex their coding or how deep their database searches and their cross referencing, they’re making assumptions. How do we break them?

Maybe if we make up stuff we can break them, make up stuff all the time, wherever, whenever, whatever. Make it up to confuse and confound them and break the analysis that brings no benefit other than to shareholders and corporations. Breaking these devices might not give us back the random events that used to occur, the odd links, the weird joy of the internet, but it might make us less of a cog in a marketing machine, less vulnerable to being manipulated.

So with those efforts to break the assumption machine in mind, my life - as an international three-armed jewel thief, associate of Glaswegian surrealist cat burglars and situationist armed robbers, mentor to impressionable axe wielding teenagers (stringed and bladed), purveyor of luxury hair products based on my own lustrous locks, trader of gilts, direction giver for Ann Widdicombe, and trans-continental pharmaceutical supplier to the stars - my life could look stately and refined in comparison to the things that we could be describing.

Let’s start now.  It’s for our own good.**
















* I know, I know, that's a cheap, manipulative shot.
** And, I know, I know, the interpretation of this entire thing will have me labelled, folded, spindled, and mutilated, by some cock awful data mining repository anyway.

Day 43, rapid writing

Getting information down in a rush is fraught with error.

While the writer might fully understand what they are thinking. They understand their viewpoint. They don’t necessarily understand all the included bias and the incidental and tangential argument, which under some circumstances becomes plainly apparent. This may become noticeably clear in the case, for example, when having a rant about something that has just been on the radio. The thoughts are quickly written and committed, incoherence and all. Adding to that confusion there is the point that the writer thinks they understand what they are thinking. Which is not necessarily the same thing at all, and which often becomes plain to the writer as the struggle to put an idea or argument into words makes it obvious that all that exists is a jumble of ideas, phrases, and incoherent argument.

So with the above myriad of inconsistencies in mind It is very easy to put ideas down in an order that can lead to interpretation of what a writer says in completely the wrong way. This being due to the convoluted structure and the lack of absolute and specific pointers to the things the writer is referring to and at what time. It only takes the ordering of ideas that pour out of the imagination in random fashion to be committed to text in that same random fashion for confusion to arise.

Without proof reading, or without a brief or longer cooling off period, depending on the purpose of the writing, there are inevitably going to be problem phrase and sentence constructions and ordering problems that lead to ambiguity.

The answer is that it is always better to review at some later point. However this defeats the purpose of trying to write something on the spur of the moment. It is still possible to do the ‘instant idea’ writing, although if there is something that misrepresents what is actually thought then it is worthwhile to go back and edit, in a blog for example. In normal life it is better to review after a suitable pause, even emails of a couple of sentences in length, before pressing send, sharing, and letting the words out for interpretation.

Day 42, oh for goodness sake

Not sure why I listen to the news, the artificial putting up of a contrary viewpoint to 'balance' a discussion removes the possibility of any sensible outcome.

Radio 4 does this all the time, giving equal weight, and therefore lending credibility, to various (almost invariably right-wing) pressure groups.  Groups that have been shown to use poor methodology in their use of statistics, and cherry pick data to back up their claims.  It's annoying and slightly depressing.  There is almost always good quality data about whatever is being discussed.  Data which has been independently verified and analysed by people that don't have an ulterior motive.  Migration Watch is one of these groups, the climate change sceptic Nigel Lawson represents another, both wheeled out to talk nonsense in the interests of 'balance'.  There is steam coming out of my ears now, and I hesitate to go further.

I give up.

Day 41, loose & lost

The roadside baguette.

Incrementally decomposing with each fresh fall of rain.

The pathway glove.

Perceiving a better life on the other side.

Day 40, never been to Birmingham

Me and a mate have a running joke about having 'never been to Birmingham'.  It's as a result of going to an end of season football match in 2002 at Birmingham City.

We arrived at 11am as we were visiting my mates relatives.  We had a cup of tea.  Went to a pub, had a pint and a game of pool.  Then set off with plenty of time spare to get to the match.

Usually if we go to away matches we set off at the latest possible moment.  Arrive and find a parking space.  Then make it to the ground with minutes to spare.  All 'skin of the teeth' stuff.  But on this occasion we had hours and hours in hand.  What could go wrong.

Driving round the Gravelly Hill Interchange we could see the ground.  All was well.

Until we failed to take the correct exit route.

Some time later we made it to the ground.  The away turnstiles wouldn't accept us and we had to go round the ground to the home fans turnstiles.  They eventually let us in, then took us under the home fans stand and out in front of the home fans all around the ground.

We made it to our seat after missing only 28 minutes of the first half.

The stand on the far left is the one we came out from under.

I can't recall the score, as I said, we've never been to Birmingham.

Day 39, misty mountain hop

Walking to work this morning, looking down from the great height of Crookes over the city, showed the valley filled with mist.  The buildings visible, poking out of the roof level cloud.  There was frost on many rooftops around me, and the occasional patch of frost on the ground.  I walked in without a coat, just a t-shirt and long sleeved shirt.  My fingers were a bit chilly but I was warm enough.  If I'd worn a coat I'd have been pouring with sweat by the time I arrived at the office, the consequence of marching along as if in the Star Walk.

There ought to be danger money paid for braving the hazards of some of the road crossings.  Crookesmoor Road can be a rat-run of heavy-foot accelerating, indicator misusing, mobile phone obsessed, morons.  "Oh like, yeah, there's like a queue of traffic back from Broomhill yeah, I'll just take this shortcut, no sweat, out of the way loser pedestrian and don't mark my Discovery."  Not sure why they are so keen on mounting the pavement.  Obviously it's of the utmost importance to get young Labyrinth and Tredescantia to nursery school on time in the gigantic armoured bus of a car.

Moving on from the depthless yahoos I'm suddenly in the midst of trees and a hidden world.  Down the gennel that leads past what used to be Ralph's Dam.  There are beehives and trees, both caged in a large enclosure.  There are birds.  There are orange cats.  There is the sound of water dripping over the keys of a 1920s Corona typewriter.  There are gelatinous moonbeam bushes with crimson smiles holding improbably large kebabs.  There is the smell of coconuts and guava halves.  There are fly agaric mushrooms.  And there's a baboon.  Oh hang on, I see what's happened here.

Day 38, price of a pint

I have no idea how much a pint costs now.  I have no idea how much a pint cost in 1990.  I do remember that a pint of Mansfield cost 75p in The Springvale on Commonside in about 1998.

So here's 85p, which I am guessing was roughly the price of a pint in 1990.

75p was a very good price for a pint.  Two pints is £1.50, etc, easy to calculate.  The Springvale was a bloody awful pub back then, and as far as I can tell never improved.  I fitted an intercom for the landlord, and received some beer in return.  It wasn't worth it.  Probably the best thing about it was the cock awful jukebox and the residents of the hostel down the road singing along to various songs that failed to be hits in the 1960s.

I generally only drink halves now and my visits to pubs are pretty rare, the last time I went boozing was at the end of October.  When I bought a round, my half, a pint, and a spiced rum and coke, it cost over eight quid, 8 bloody quid.  That's nearly a tenner for goodness sake.  It's a flavoured liquid not a fucking lifestyle choice.  Honestly.  I ask you.  Etc. 

The last pub visited on that night out was The Hallamshire, also on Commonside.  The three of us on entering the premises increased the average age by 50%, and it was packed, and it's a big pub.  Back when I used to eat meat, and could drink pints (those two things are not connected), I used to go to The Hallamshire on a Sunday morning for the roast pork sandwich and the hair of the dog.  Les was the landlord at the time, and the performance of the roast pork, the carving, and the delivery, was something else.  It was a delight.  I suspect that being the age of the current clientele at the time may have helped.  Although the age mix then covered a broader spectrum.  There was always a sense of occasion about it.  A touch of The League of Gentlemen and the 'special stuff'.

I'm sure the current occupiers of the place are building their own histories.  There may be pork involved.

Day 37, donor cycles

There have been quite a few motorbikes in my life.  Sometimes there has been more than one at a time although I've never owned more than three simultaneously.  It's been a while since I've had a vrooom, I really ought to get out and about more.

Here's one that I've had since the late 1990s, it is currently in need of a small amount of maintenance.

It's a Honda VF400 from 1983.

I briefly owned a rather fancy old machine at the same time as the Honda.  This is them giving each other the eye.

It's a 650 Matchless G12 Deluxe, built in 1960.  Here it is out and about.

It was an experience to ride.  Given its age it didn't have automatic ignition timing, there is a lever on the left hand side of the handlebars to manually advance and retard the timing.  If you get this wrong you can cause the pistons to overheat and burn a hole in them, so you have to make sure you get it right.  The braking capability was also something else, it arrived as if delivered by post, that's drum brakes for you, you really had to think ahead.  A bit of a luxury for me, I'm generally rough and ready and a bit messy, so I sold it.  It didn't help that it was a bit of a worry keeping something so flash.  I replaced it with a VFR 750, which I still have.  The VFR also needs a small amount of maintenance...

Here's another older one of mine, much more my style.  It's a Kawasaki Z400 with sidecar.  An absolute delight and terror to ride - there is absolutely no experience like it, it was brilliant.

And here is the engine on our bedroom floor having some maintenance.  I carried it up myself.

It did get put back together, and it did live again.

Day 36, study update

Here we are a week later. How many hours have I managed to secure to devote to study time. Remember the target was 12.5 hours. Well, it’s been about 30 minutes. That’s right, 30 minutes.

That’s 30 minutes over the space of a week.  Which isn’t terrific.

However, I tend to start slowly whatever I’m doing and then accelerate massively later on.  So I’ll give it some more time to see how long I can devote to what the Victorians would have called ‘self improvement’.  I reckon about 6 months should be long enough for me to actually get motivated. Never underestimate the power of inertia.  It’s not that I’m short of things to do, there are literally dozens of projects I have cued up for launch. Maybe there are too many things cued up? Is that possible? Get outta here, of course it ain't. Never mind, head down and get on with it.

Let’s see if by next week the minutes will be over 40. If not then maybe my powers as an autodidact are on the wane.

Dull.  Yes.  Sorry.  Been a long week. Or has it been too short?

Day 35, work rules

Here’s a few things we should do at work.

We should all be backlit.

We should all wear deeley boppers, with coloured lights in them.

We should all have to wait 10 seconds after someone has finished speaking before we start.

We should be limited to 30 seconds of speaking.

No meeting should last more than 30 minutes.

Photographs on identity cards will be in profile, from your best side.

Meetings must start and finish on time.

There will be five 'kiss me quick' hats available for departmental use.

Names will be drawn out of a hat for order of speaking.

In meetings you will only be allowed to speak twice in any rolling 10 minute period.

Important decisions can only be made after three people have successfully juggled a salt pot, a pepper pot, and a jar of mustard, for 20 seconds each.

There must be an agenda included in any meeting booking.

Dinner breaks should always be observed.

A minimum of three full days notice is required for any meeting.

Emergency meetings are allowed and should be held while walking in an anti-clockwise direction around meeting tables while music plays.

A ‘kiss me quick’ hat has to be worn while speaking.

Emergency meetings are subject to the same speaking rules except members may speak for only 15 seconds and may speak 3 times in any 7 minute rolling period.

Silence is valid, tolerated, and lends greater weight to anything you might ever have said - you must actually have said something at some point.

Food will be from a recommended range of noodles or home made sandwiches.

Shorts will be mandatory when the temperature is at exactly 17 degrees C.

No person should remain seated at a desk for any period longer than 15 minutes.

Runny noses will not be tolerated.

Anyone deviating from the above will have to affect a French accent, as close to that of Marseille as possible, and say "hello, I'm Nigel Farage, a famous burlesque artist", before speaking further.

Day 34, empty head

I had a bit of an empty head at times earlier this week. Cue the ‘banter’ style jokes about that being normal, yawn. The empty head thing happens occasionally. One of those brief periods of time where even the simplest and most obvious things, the sort of things you’ve done a thousand times before, seem to wrong foot you and cause confusion.

This must be pretty normal, it must cause all sorts of confusion and annoyance for other people. There must always be a proportion of people going through phases like this all the time. Imagine the scale of confusion that this causes in organisations, imagine it on a global scale. What must be the cost of this to us as an organisation or society.

What I’ve done above is make an assumption that this state exists. How could we go about proving that this problem exists, and that it exists objectively at the same time that it appears to exist subjectively. If it does exist objectively is it possible to determine what the causes are, whether the causes are the same thing, and whether it is possible to identify a wide enough common cause that it would be worthwhile to look for a method of managing it or preventing it. Perhaps the wide variation of causes, if that is what it turns out to be, can be managed/handled in a generic way anyway and we don’t need to narrow it down to a specialist, clearly defined treatment.

We could be in danger of medicalising something that is a bog standard element of human behaviour.

My preference to deal with it would be to alter how we think or change an aspect of behaviour or our environment.

e.g. use daylight bulbs, turn the heating down, recite the alphabet backwards, run round the block, go home, have a G & T, have a lovely bitter IPA, sit in the park looking at ducks, do vocal warm ups, go to work, sing, make up songs, tell jokes, swear effusively, have a lie down, juggle, consider the meaningless of existence, cry, eat lots of chocolate, have an onion bhaji, turn the heating up, have another onion bhaji.  I am open to further suggestions.

There is almost certainly research being done into this state of being right now, I just haven’t searched for it in the electronic resources. Maybe I’ll look later.  If you can add any proposed methods for addressing this then please feel free.

Day 33, lessons

Anomie - the personal feeling of a lack of social norms or the confusion that arises when those norms conflict.  Memorable from ‘O’ level Sociology for some reason.

Alienation - another concept memorable from the same class.

Imagine a 2 hour lesson where the teacher reads from a textbook, without pause for questions, while the class take notes.  No bloody wonder it’s those points that stood out.

Disaffection - the outcome of the above.

Rebellion - I wrote my notes one line at a time, skipping 3 lines, writing another line.  Then after reaching the bottom of the page go back to the top and continue on the next free line.  Etc.  Not exactly Ernesto "Che" Guevara.  May even still have the notes, with comments from the teacher.

Not sure what grade I got, probably unclassified.

Day 32, the sound of damage

All quiet somewhere 
Ringing
Whistling
Hissing
The occasional pop
High pitched
Trilling
Dull rumble, like a 79 bus idling at Parson Cross
Louder when under the weather
Like microscopic cutlery falling down an endless staircase
Helium mice
Constant
Ear damage
Not here

Day 31, hidden tunnels and passages

At work today when discussing a few underground oddities that Sheffield has it occurred to me that we weren't too far from an interesting tunnel.

The Charlton Tunnel passes from above the recreation ground on the Ponderosa on one side of Crookes Valley Road to a point in the bushes in Crookes Valley Park behind the bowling green huts. There is a large shaft leading down from within the bushes that connects with the tunnel. There is valve gear within. This shaft used to be surrounded by a high wall until sometime in the 1980s when the wall was removed and the top of the shaft was capped with concrete. There is a metal grill in the concrete cap and it is possible to see into the shaft. I’d always assumed that this shaft had been an overflow for the reservoir that was there before it had been drained and turned into the park, although would the wall have withstood the pressure of all that water? Maybe the level wasn’t that high or it was assumed not to be a problem if the level did raise and the wall collapsed.

It is thought the name ‘Charlton’ came from the name on the cast iron cover to the entrance which read ‘Charlton Iron Works’. I’d never heard it called by this name other than from the various expeditions down there in the late 2000s.

There are plenty of other accounts and photographs, a search for ‘charlton tunnel’ will find many, and there are plenty of others where that name isn’t used.

There is speculation about the purpose of the tunnel. It has been suggested that it was used for horses to get from one side to the other, or that it was a storage space for barrage balloons. No doubt there are other ideas. I’d suggest it was as mundane as enabling access to the valve gear. The idea that it was a storage space for barrage balloons doesn’t seem right. It is true that there were barrage balloons anchored to points at the top of the Ponderosa, there are photographs of them in the Sheffield archive showing them being raised.

I’d say that given the difficulty of getting in and out of the tunnel, down a narrow shaft with iron rungs in the wall, that it was not used to store much of anything larger than a wholemeal loaf. Never mind storing something as large and unwieldy as a barrage balloon which would need rapid deployment if not already available. It would have been difficult to store anything in there, even equipment that didn’t need to be accessed quickly.

Unless there is another entrance.

There are rumours of another entrance but none of the reports I’ve read suggest seeing anything that would resemble another passage or doorway in.

This site has some good photographs, none of them show another entrance or even signs of one.

Hard luck if you wish to visit as the entrance shaft has been filled in with earth, rendering the possibility of getting into the tunnel non-existent.  So unless there is a third way in then other than digging the earth out the only other option would be to use bolt cutters and climbing gear to lower yourself down the main shaft.

That doesn't rule out the possibility other underground channels, although perhaps slightly more hazardous to explore without sub-aqua gear.

There was a series of Linked reservoirs from Redmires down to the various service reservoirs which ended with The Great Dam, now the site of Crookes Valley Park. From Redmires there is a conduit to Hadfield (formerly Pisgah Dam) just down from The Grindstone pub in Crookes where the sports fields are. There is a small dam, Lydgate, which is behind the TV mast at the top of Lydgate Lane, which may be fed in some other way, but most likely from the Redmires Dams. Down from Hadfield Dam was Ralph’s Dam, which is where the Arthur Willis environment centre now is. Then down to Misfortune, which is on the site of the Northumberland Road category B car park. On the opposite side of Northumberland Road was Butchers Dam which is now nicknamed Naz’s big hole, and then down to The Old Great Dam in Crookes Valley park. There were also Godfrey dam which is now occupied by the University sports fields (opposite Weston Park Hospital), and below that on the other side of Northumberland Road behind the Psychology building was New Dam now also now the location of University sports facilities.

Day 30, a Heeley passage

How many generations have walked through this Heeley passage and along the path by the river on their way to work.

Is it even accessible now, it’s about 25 years since I took this photograph and changes to the landscape may have blocked it off. It wouldn’t be unusual, various back routes from West Street down to Trippett Lane have been blocked. Routes through workshops where bands used to practice after the little mesters had deserted them. Through courtyards overgrown with grasses and weeds. How many of these places are left, reminders of less automotive times.

Day 29, more study

How hard can it be to find 12.5 hours a week? Why am I asking? It’s roughly the number of hours needed to do a 30 credit course over 6 months. As a general rule 1 credit is the equivalent of 10 hours of work. This tends to equate to between 12 and 15 hours of work per week over the 26 weeks of 30 credit course. I’ve put a finger in the air and chosen 12.5 hours as the amount of time I would need to find per week. If I was to do a masters course I’d need to keep this up for 3 years. That is for 6 courses amounting to a total of 180 credits.

I have not decided whether I want to do a masters course or not. The concerns I have are whether I can find the time and whether I have the motivation, not to mention the cost. Counting the time that I have already committed to other things shows that most Tuesday nights are busy as well as quite a few Saturday afternoons. That leaves four weekday evenings and at least one and a half days over the weekend, each week. It must be possible to find the amount of time needed from within those days. With that in mind I’ve decided to spend time studying subjects that I have books for already. It will cost nothing and will give me an idea whether I can build the motivation. If I can maintain this for a few months and it becomes a habit then I will decide whether this is something that I want to commit to for a longer period.

Having said that I might find that studying free material that I already have may be an option in itself even if I can’t maintain the number of hours. Just looking at the number of hours available it appears possible. However account needs to be taken of cooking, shopping, tidying, and other life maintenance.

Day 28

Every day there are different technical challenges presented in work.  There is much complexity in supporting such a diverse environment that it often proves to be very challenging.  Difficult decisions have to be made, sometimes problems cannot be resolved in as elegant a manner as would be liked, compromises have to be made.  Developing an understanding of the viewpoints of other team members, academics, and researchers, while attempting to seek appropriate solutions to problems, requires a lot of hard work and mental effort from all involved.  It is fascinating to meet so many smart people and see their drive and determination to understand the finest details of their subject areas.

These are all diverting and interesting tasks that make the work fulfilling and which need a high level of engagement with others and their interests.

Very unlike some of the jobs of my former years.  Contract cleaning, working over 40 hours in about 3 days which included a 24 hour shift.  A job where the main requirement was stamina and the ability to stay awake.  Or hand preparing cars for resprays, sanding down the paint surface to provide a key for the primer.  Then using wet and dry paper to ‘flat off’ the primer then spray on more primer, repeat until the propellant thinners cause you to see tulips, tarantulas, long deceased ancestors, and more, then go out and try not to get run over while collecting the sandwiches.  Both of these required an ability to disappear inside yourself and provide entertainment, create worlds, build political systems, and develop practical things such as design chrono-valves for mixing the time-propellant for your ultra-fast starship.

But then again.  There is a mix of those skills and abilities needed in both types of job, which it isn’t always easy to spot.

Day 27, boredom

That post title, boredom, is a little misleading.  I never get bored.  Which suggests I'm easily amused and have confetti between my ears, or that I can find plenty of ways to entertain myself.

I may look like I'm sitting, staring into space.  However there's probably a plan being hatched, options being sorted, or a noisy musical event taking place within the confines of my head.

Assuming the head is where consciousness resides.

All the same it may still be confetti that sits in that consciousness space.


Here are the Buzzcocks - Boredom.

Excellent.

And here's Devoto's version after he left Buzzcocks to form Magazine.  1978 Peel session.

Marvellous.

I'll have to get my Spiral Scratch e.p. out to caress it in a minute, if I have time between all this confetti juggling.